I must have tried TX16Wx three or four times in the past, and found it buggy. I just had a go with the latest version, and it seems pretty stable. It can import but not export SFZ files.
As for my take on publishing in the TX16Wx XML format, here are my thoughts:
The format seems fine, and well documented though dense. It looks like:
<tx:region tx:mode="DFD" tx:attenuation="0 dB" tx:pan="0%" tx:wave="93" tx:root="B4" tx:fine="0">
<tx:bounds tx:high-vel="127" tx:low-key="A#4" tx:low-vel="0" tx:high-key="B4"/>
</tx:region>
Ron_K mentioned that it does not have round-robins. It has them, but only in the pro version. Both SFZ and Decent Sampler (DS) support round-robins and random-robins in the free versions (the random-robin implementation is complicated in SFZ).
Ron_K mentioned it is a far more available and distributed tool. I’m not sure what is meant by that, as Sforzando (the main sfz player) and DS are free and also run on Windows and Mac. Looks like TX16Wx has been around since 2012, Sforzando since 2009 but the (SFZ format is older [before 2005]), DS I think is new this year.
Ron_K seems to feel negatively about text-doc based sample formats, but TX16Wx is also text based (XML). TX16Wx does have a useable graphical front end built into the vst that saves to XML. for SFZ there is a graphical program called SFZ designer, as well as Polyphone, although the latter requires importing and exporting to SFZ. For finding good loop points, there is the program Endless-Wave that runs on Mac and Windows. Polyphone also has a loop suggester, but I find Endless-Wave to be better. DS is XML based but there is no Graphical Editor. My personal preference is for text, as I find it faster, but everyone has a preference.
Final thoughts: There is an old joke about a computer programmer upset that there are 14 different standards for a particular process. He vows to make the one standard that everyone will use. One year later, there are now 15 standards… I find a lack of round-robins to be a pretty big negative, and it was clearly left out of the free version to push people toward the paid versions. Sforzando leaves out the ability to create a pretty UI unless you contact the developer and either pay or are granted a free waiver (up to them). while DS allows both. So while I don’t see a need for yet another format for Pianobook, with so many already (Kontakt5, Kontakt6, EXS, SFZ, DS [newly added I believe] and even one in Sequential Prophet X format) what’s one more?
